Panasonic Begins To Lock Out 3d-Party Camera Batteries

OhMyBattery writes "The latest firmware updated for Panasonic digital cameras contains one single improvement: it locks out the ability to use 'non-genuine Panasonic' batteries. It does so for safety reasons, it says. It seems to indicate that this is going to be the norm for all new Panasonic digital cameras. From the release: 'Panasonic Digital Still Cameras now include a technology that can identify a genuine Panasonic battery. For the protection of our customers Panasonic developed this technology after it was discovered that some aftermarket 3rd party batteries do not meet the rigid safety standards Panasonic uses.' The firmware warning is quite clear as to what it does: 'After this firmware update your Panasonic Digital Camera cannot be operated by 3rd party batteries (non genuine Panasonic batteries).'"

Comments

Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wants to make a buck stifling competition and innovation these days.

Re:Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wants to make a buck stifling competition and innovation these days.

Well, I wouldn't buy a Panasonic to start with, but I don't think that's their primary motive.

I worked for some time as a camera dealer/repair shop. We would often see people come in with a damaged camera, pop out the 3rd-party battery and replace it with the Genuine one, and try to claim the Warranty.
This costs the camera makers a lot of money repairing equipment that they really shouldn't have to, since they can't tell what kind of battery was in the device.

Personally, I think a better move would be for the firmware to simply set some type of non-resettable internal flag showing that a non-approved battery was loaded, and display some type of alert option. If such a device was returned for service/refund/exchange, you could void the warranty if the flag was set.

No need to prevent the use of such batteries outright. But I can sort of sympathize with them, there are some pretty cheap batteries that are almost guaranteed to split/leak/explode. And if they can't put a stop to the warranty claims from such items, people will abuse it to no end. Simple formula- right before the warranty expires, load in a very cheap off-brand battery that you have intentionally over-stressed, and use it until it pops and ruins the camera. Voila, for the price of a battery + shipping you can have a brand new $1,000 camera.

I am in the market for a new camera.

[macbeth66]

I guess it will not be a Panasonic. If it had issued a warning after putting hte battery in, then it would be OK. This just sounds like the same crap Lexmark pulled. I still actively recommend against their printers.

Re:I am in the market for a new camera.

[wherrera]

yeah, but it's apparently legal for a battery maker to clone their battery "feature":

http://www.pcworld.com/article/121327/supreme_court_rebuffs_lexmark_in_toner_cartridge_fight.html

Re:I am in the market for a new camera.

[snowraver1]

As I see it, the camera is using the (unofficial) battery to post and load the firmware, only to realize that the battery is illigal, and then either eisplays message or halts. I just find it funny that it has to use the very device that it intends to block to power the check.

Maybe good justification

[McGregorMortis]

The justification they offer for this is not necessarily illegitimate.

If the camera has a built-in charger, then there is a very real possibility of battery fires or explosions if a 3rd-party battery doesn't match the characteristics that the charger was designed for. If you don't believe that can happen, then I suggest you review all the stories of exploding laptop batteries. It can and does happen.

On the other hand, if there is no built-in charger (my Canon cameras don't have built-in chargers), then they are definitely first-rate ass-pirates and players of the pink oboe.

Re:Maybe good justification

[10101001 10101001]

In related news, Sony has announced that it will be installing new firmware locking-out Sony batteries in their laptops, citing safety concerns.

Re:Well...

[wowbagger]

"As long as subsequent firmware updates can be applied without applying this one, I'm fine with it."

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Any future updates will also have this (mis-)feature.

If I can't use common batteries, forget it

[roc97007]

If I can't use AA or AAA batteries (or some reasonable equivalent) I'm not interested. Even my pro D-SLR has an adapter to use double As.

Just say no to crap like this. Who needs Panasonic? There are lots of choices out there.

Re:Adds strength to the Don't Buy Panasonic moveme

[guyfawkes-11-5]

What a coincidence! Today my wallet decided to lock out Panasonic products. Oh well. Canon is better anyway.

Re:Norelco did this for years

[zapakh]

I had no problem opening up a Norelco to solder in new NiC.

I meant "NiCd batteries."

I was about to ask to subscribe to your newsletter about network-enabled shavers.

Generic batteries are a must for any of my devices

[ehud42]

I have bought a number of music players, cameras and other electronic gadgets and my number 1 requirement is it must use standard off the shelf batteries (namely AA or AAA). This is for a number of reasons:

1) Avoid planned obsolescence - hardwired batteries (I'm looking at you Apple) mean the product will be useless by not holding a charge long before I'm done using it.
2) Emergency power - having proprietary batteries either hardwired or not means that if I run out of a charge while on a road trip or away from my charger, then I'm hooped - I have to wait up to hours for the battery to charge.

And now:

3) Stupid vendor lock in - I have better things to spend my money on than overpriced name brand accessories / supplies.

I look forward to the day when cellphones can efficiently run on 2 or 3 AAA's.

I just bought a lower end digital camera and steered away from Panasonic as soon as I realized they did not use AA or AAA batteries. Went with a Fuji S1000 - have been happy with it so far - uses the same NiMH AA batteries I have for my Olympus camera, iRiver MP3 player, and LogicTech cordless mouse.

Therein lies the problem

[dtmos]

Any battery with the same specifications should work..

At the risk of incipient tar-and-feathering, let me offer a contrasting point of view.

All batteries are not alike. The length of a proper battery specification for a consumer application is enormous (several hundred pages), and usually includes a requirement along the lines of, "No change shall be made to an approved product [i.e., the battery], whether or not such change affects performance to the specifications herein, without prior express written consent of the XYZ Corporation" -- in other words, once it's working in our application don't change anything, whether or not we've thought to control that parameter in the spec. The problem is, the consumer has no way of knowing that the battery he's buying actually meets the product's battery specification -- and there are plenty of motivational reasons for the knockoff battery supplier to cut corners. Even an ethical battery manufacturer has to work very closely with the consumer product design team to understand the details of the battery specification.

I spent 25 years designing portable products for consumer applications, and I stand before this frenzied mob to say that one of the largest problems one faces when engineering these products are non-standard batteries. The consumer buys a knockoff battery, and when the product sooner or later (a) catches fire, (b) has terrible battery life, or (c) exhibits some unusual behavior, I am here to tell you that the consumer will blame the product, rather than the battery, 100% of the time, driving warranty costs through the roof. This leads to incredible feats of over-engineering in the product itself, to account for as many types of battery variation as the engineering staff can think of, and that the development program cost and time goals allow. The ability to design for a specific type of battery -- and only that type of battery -- was a luxury often discussed among the engineers with which I worked, since we knew we were adding cost, size, and weight to our designs as "defensive engineering" against the knockoffs.

I can see that you remain unconvinced, so let me give you a few examples of battery specifications, and the problems caused when they are not met.

1. Internal resistance. Batteries do not all source the same amount of current when given the same load. Take a dozen manganese-dioxide AAA batteries from a dozen battery vendors around the world. Periodically place, say, a 10-ohm resistor across their terminals, and measure the voltage across the battery terminals over time. The difference between the open-circuit battery voltage and the voltage under load is controlled by the internal resistance of the battery. A fresh, good cell from a reputable manufacturer will have an internal resistance of approximately 1 to 1.5 ohms, so the voltage under load remains high, approaching the open-circuit voltage.

A cell from a less reputable manufacturer can have an internal resistance of several dozen ohms; when this cell is placed in a product that draws, say, 100 mA from its battery (for example, when sending an audible alert, or turning on a few LEDs), the battery voltage seen by the product can drop from the nominal 1.3 V to as low as 0.3 V, usually leading to a system reset. The consumer, of course, knows only that that crappy product from XYZ Corporation doesn't work (or stopped working sooner than expected, or does funny stuff when the volume knob is set too high); there's no way for him to know the internal resistance of the battery he bought.

Note that the internal resistance of all batteries increases as the battery is discharged, so a major part of power management in portable products is addressing this issue. Frequently, especially in products with high peak-to-average current drain ratios, battery internal resistance, rather than energy exhaustion itself, is the factor that determines battery life, so how fast internal resistance changes over the life of the bat